How to Build a Scalable Online Asset (& Stop Burning Cash!) Episode 161

 👉 Ready to start your own online store? Start here:
 https://dropshipunlocked.com/start?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=ep161-build-scalable-online-asset

🗣 In this episode, Lewis Smith and James Eardley discuss how to turn idle savings into a scalable online asset—one that produces real cashflow and grows in value over time.
If you’ve ever thought about starting an online business but hesitated because of risk, this episode explains why building your own high-ticket, UK-based e-commerce store might be one of the smartest and safest capital investments you can make.

They cover everything from why inflation is eating your savings to how to build an asset that generates income and equity — without creating another job for yourself.

👉 Prefer to watch this on YouTube? Check it out here ➡️ https://youtu.be/-SzjrBpuzNc

Topics Discussed:
★ Inflation and Idle Capital: Why letting cash sit in a bank is one of the biggest risks in today’s economy.
★ The Smartest Way to Deploy Capital: Why high-ticket e-commerce offers better returns and control than property, stocks, or crypto.
★ Building a Real Asset: How to create a business that generates both cashflow and equity—something you truly own and can sell.
★ The De-Risked Business Model: Why UK-based suppliers and immediate cashflow make this model more stable than other ventures.
★ Systemising for Scale: How to build your e-commerce business like an investor—turning it into a scalable asset, not another job.
★ The Six-Week Execution Plan: The fast, focused roadmap to go from idea to cashflow within weeks.

Links and Resources Mentioned:
Pick up a copy of Lewis’ book: https://dropshipunlocked.com/book
Get Shopify for £1 a month for 3 months: https://dropshipunlocked.com/shopify
Get a free trial with a professional phone line: https://dropshipunlocked.com/circle

Key Takeaways:
★ Cash sitting idle is losing value: Inflation is eroding your savings daily — invest it into something that grows.
★ Control equals confidence: With UK suppliers, you own your brand, your margins, and your customer data — no middlemen.
★ Low risk, high reward: You don’t need to gamble on trends or pour tens of thousands into stock to start.
★ Leverage through systems: Hire VAs and build automation early to create time freedom and scale without burnout.

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Website: https://www.dropshipunlocked.com/

★★★ Dropship Unlocked - Lewis Smith ★★★

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Transcript

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Inflation is burning your savings. So deploying your capital has never been more important than it is right now. But only if you when you've got. Some capital, you've got an opportunity that most people don't. The chance to build a real scalable asset. But you have to. And it's those people who've built a scalable asset that gives them the greatest return. This might just be the smartest way to turn your capital into a growing cash flowing asset that you control. When done right, it's one of the best capital investments you can make, but only if you welcome to the Dropship Unlocked podcast. I'm Lewis Smith, the founder of Dropship Unlocked and with me is our client success coach, James Eardley. Now, when we're not recording podcast episodes or running our own e commerce businesses, you'll find us helping a small aspiring entrepreneurs launch their own high ticket dropshipping stores. So if you're ready to build your own six or even seven figure online business, then head over to dropshipunlocked.com forward/start. Now sit back, relax and let's unlock your potential with the Dropship Unlocked podcast. If you are sitting on some savings, perhaps you've been through a exit event or you've got a severance package, or there's been a big business payout and you're wondering how to turn that capital into something that actually works for you, then this episode is for you. Today we're going to be talking about how to build a scalable online asset, not just a job for yourself, and how to stop letting your cash burn in low yield accounts or risky gambles. So there is. Let's kick things off then, because a lot of people see this starting a business malarkey as a bit risky. Okay. And if someone's sitting on 10 to 50k in capital, why do you actually think that starting this type of e commerce business is actually one of the smartest places to deploy it? Yeah, it's a great question and I think there's never been a more timely moment to discuss this kind of topic. You know, we're seeing headlines in the news at the moment of huge corporates laying off more and more people than we've ever seen. Like huge tens of thousands of people literally being made redundant, being told that their jobs no longer exist. You know, and these are big companies like Amazon and PwC, like huge consultancy firms. It's, I mean it's only going one way, isn't it? With automation, with AI is becoming so much more valuable to take control of your own income and build a skill set and a system and an asset that can generate you that income without it being contingent or reliant upon a job and a boss to be paying you a nice comfortable monthly salary because it's only comfortable until it stops being paid and then suddenly you're out on your own. So I think the time to be figuring this out is possibly even before you're in that situation. But certainly if you're in that situation now, we've seen many people go through this. So I guess the way to think of this, our model of UK based e commerce businesses is very low risk. It's de risked in the sense or in comparison to other models. So with this model, you own the asset from day one. So it's a real UK company, it's your brand that you're building, it's your margins that you dictate and it's real customer data that you own. So it's not rented traffic, it's not affiliates, it's not like Amazon where they don't give you the, you know, the customer list and the customer information and it's all very much on their platform and they can kind of kick you off whenever they'd like to. With this, you own the business. The other thing with this is that it's not hugely capital intensive. It's not like you have to pour tens of thousands of pounds into buying a container's worth of stock and then hoping that it sells and leasing a physical premises. The cash flow with this kind of model begins within a matter of weeks. It's not taking years to get to revenue generation stage. You know, you're not waiting for product development or people to download and install your app, or developers or suppliers, you know, getting your products created. The type of suppliers and the type of products that we sell, they're ready, they're already in demand, they're selling. And so you come in and sell those high margin products straight away and your cash flow begins immediately. I mean, Shopify takes what, a few days to pay out that, that capital and then you can use that to purchase the items from suppliers. And the whole thing is cash flow positive from the beginning. So you get to control that growth, you get to own the data, you're building an asset. And so it's very much within your control. And I think that's really important, especially if you've been in the situation where you thought you were in control, maybe in a job, and then you found out I'm being made redundant or, you know, I've Been told my job no longer exists. And so you don't want to be in that situation again. You don't want to build a business only to find out in two years time it all kind of gets wiped out again. You really want that control and that autonomy. And so with our home turf advantage model, we teach you how to watch things like your return on your ad spend and your average order value. These metrics that are so important, your cost to acquire a customer, those, those metrics, those stats, you can watch them like a hawk and then you just scale up as and when you're profitable. Yeah. So it's all backed on data, the decisions we make to go into the business in the first place. And that's one of the many reasons. That I went for High ticket E commerce when I first came across yourself, Lewis and dropship unlocks because I like the idea of the de risk model because it was already a proven path for me to deploy the savings I put together into a business plan that had been done proven multiple times by people in a similar situation to myself. It wasn't like these crypto things that you see online or some sketchy dropshipping TikTok Chinese supplier play that you see online that really isn't a legit brand that you're going to build for the long term. So if anyone's listening and they want a really in depth dive into how we do all this, then we have done other episodes about how we choose products that sell straight away. And that was episode 143 a few episodes back. But in this episode I want to dive into why specifically Lewis? It's an asset that we're building because people with capital put to one side, they want to invest that into assets, not just liabilities. So why specifically is this High ticket E commerce model an online asset and why is it so powerful? Absolutely, yeah. I think it comes down to long term leverage that you're building. So it's not just a short term hustle where you're trying to make a bit of quick cash flow. This, this, don't get me wrong, it can be very profit profit profitable and create cash flow very quickly. But we've got one eye on the longer journey here with this business. And so there's a few things that I think to answer your question, make this a true asset in the the definition of the term. So first is it it generates you cash flow whilst also building equity. So you're also building a brand that is creating asset value that one day you could decide, I'm going to now sell that business as a contained kind of offer bundle to a investor who then purchases that business. And then you would get a lump sum just like you would for selling any business. The nice thing about it is that it, it pays you monthly though through the sales that you're getting. So over time you're earning every month from it. And then eventually you can also sell the asset as a profitable business. A lot of businesses, you'll find it's almost one or the other. You know, a business might not be revenue generating or it might be loss making or whatever and then you kind of hope that some investor will one day come and acquire you and then that's where you, you realise the liquidity and release the equity from the business by selling it and that's when you get your money. But actually this does both, which is really nice and it's, it's replicable as well. You know, it's not like these are unicorn e commerce brands where we're hoping that you know, one in a hundred thousand will get picked by some venture capital firm to like come in and fund us and like we have to be the next Uber or you know, it's not like that. It's like these are being purchased by investors, you know, maybe a few hundred thousand pounds every day all around the world so that they're not rare events. Once you've learned how to build one as well, no one can take those skills away from you. You know, you just do it again. So that's the thing, once you've learned how to build one of these businesses, you can just rinse and repeat and do it again. Or maybe you can use the income coming in from one of your businesses to then buy and acquire other businesses like this. And then you add your skills to it, make it better, make it more profitable, add more suppliers, improve the ads and suddenly you're creating this little portfolio. So talking about de risking and diversification of your income, imagine you had four, say three, four different stores, all in different niches, all that generate you income. You know that that has ruled out the risk of like someone coming along and making you redundant. Because even if one of those businesses for some reason failed, you've then got two others and you've got the skills that you used to create them in the first place. So you can go out there into the world and you know, build another business. Or if for some reason you don't want to do that and you want to go back to the world of employment and say actually I'd rather have a salary. You go to one of many hundreds of thousands of e commerce companies out there and say, I'm skilled in ads, email marketing, supplier negotiations, website optimization. Like all the skills you learn through the process of doing this are also like career development skills as well as valuable skills for you as an entrepreneur. So I think that's why it's so valuable. It's because it creates options for you. You can scale it up, you can sell it, you can hand it off to a virtual assistant like I know we do, or you can use the skills to rinse and repeat, do the same thing again, or use those in the world of employment. It's so freeing. It gives you so much control. While you can then focus on investing your time and your finances elsewhere like property or stocks or other businesses. But this becomes your kind of golden goose. It's the cash flow generating machine, which. Is super exciting, especially in today's climate where, as you say, Louis, more and more people are feeling the risk of having a job because jobs aren't as secure perhaps as they once were. Or if they've been through an exit event and they've retired and they've got some cash, they're now thinking about what options do I have with that cash and how can I put it into something that isn't going to be as risky as the previous situation. And something that's always going to be de risked is investing in yourself and the skills that you have. And certainly in my journey, as soon as I learned the skill of building an e commerce business and running ads and generating traffic to a website, selling, signing suppliers, opportunities came to me so I could build a second store with a business partner. And more and more opportunities open up when you develop yourself and learn these skills about how to sell online. It's really fundamental in today's day and age. I think it's only going to increase how important that is as well. And also investing in a scalable online asset like building your own e commerce business. It's the the Rich dad model, right from the famous personal finance book by Robert Kiyosaki, the Rich dad versus Poor Dad. And that book teaches us all about when you've got some cash, it's all about buying assets rather than buying liabilities and buying assets, specifically that cash flow until you can live off the cash flow from the assets. And you're also building wealth over time in that those assets are going to increase in value over time. And so that's what we're buying here with an e commerce business. We're buying the skills that we'll learn to generate the business for ourselves. We've got a hundred percent ownership over that business that grows in equity over time and grows in cash flow as you develop the business and scale it over time as well. So it really is a beautiful model to deploy capital into it and scale. And I'm so glad I came across Dropship Unlocked a few years ago to build my own version of this. And I've now got two cash flowing stores that pay me every month and grow in value if I wanted to sell them one day. So perhaps somebody then is sold by the model, they can see the vision clearly and they think this is going to be a really interesting opportunity to deploy my capital. But they don't quite know what it actually entails or where they would start. So what would you say to them, Louis? How do they start if they want to move fast but not break anything or take any risks? Yeah, so we have helped so many people in that exact situation. So the way we structure it is very streamlined, it's fast, focused, like we can minimise the risk as much as possible. And the way we initially get things off the ground for you is with a think of it like a six week execution plan. So week by week we've got milestones. It's like niche selection, signing suppliers, getting your website up and running, running ads to it, you know, no fluff, really building the business very, very kind of minimally at first, to the point of generating cash flow. So the later we can come back and invest a bit more time and maybe use some of the cash that it's kicking off to then reinvest back into that business to make it better and better as we go. The other thing is it's very driven by numbers. It's KPI linked. So it's like we're looking along the process of building this at what's our average order value? What's our return on ad spend? Is that good enough? Does that meet our profitability goals? What's our store's conversion rate? Is that okay, how do we improve it? How do we double it and therefore double our revenue and double our profit? So you'll know if things are working because you'll be able to see these indicators as you go through the process and anything that's not, we've got modules in the programme on how to fix that thing and you can just jump on a call with us and chat with us and we can help you through that process. We're trying to give you Leverage as well. This is the, the whole goal here. We're trying to show you how to get to the point where you can hire your first VA as soon as you've got proof of concept so that you don't get trapped into running the business like it's another job for you. That's the key. It's not about pouring your time into this and being like, well, I could just replace what I do all day with replacing, you know, my own company and spending all my time there instead. Really what you've done there is just create another job for yourself. Except that it's just that now you're the boss and the employee. Eventually if you want leverage and you want, like we said, multiple of these or you want to really scale it up, the key is about zooming out and putting your CEO hat on your, your company founder hat and thinking what would the, the chief executive of a big company like this do? Would they be the one that's like on the phone scrambling to fulfil orders, dealing with customer service, live chats all the time? Probably not. Right? They would be putting in place a team looking at what can they do to double the business, what phone calls, conversations, you know, things. Can they implement that, double or triple the revenue over the next year. And that's probably not going to be answering live chats and things like that. So there's nothing wrong with that at the beginning, but we're trying to build systems in place and give you leverage from day one. Yes. And it's that, that leverage that really allows you to go to the scale that people want to get to. We've seen people build multiple stores once they've got the first skill of how to build the first one. And we've seen people do work for their suppliers once they've got the skills of running ads and web development, you know, opening up so many doors once you go into this line of work for opportunities, building equity and cash flowing assets. So what is the precise first step for somebody if they're keen to get started today? Yeah. Well, if you are listening to us right now and you're ready to go from having idle capital sitting in a low interest account and you're thinking, I really want to build a scalable online asset that gives me that freedom, that cash flow, that, that future asset value and that control, then the best place to start is head over to dropship unlocked.com start now. There you can access the full roadmap that we talked about today. There's a short video you can watch that video book in a call if it sounds like something you want to do, and we'll have a chat with you through the options and speak to you about getting started. I think it comes down to thinking like if you feel fundamentally like the capital that you've worked your life to build, if you feel like that deserves better than just sitting in a savings account in six weeks from now, you could have a store built, you could have suppliers in place, you could have ads running, and you could have sales coming in. Even if you've never touched anything to do with e commerce before. Like so many of our successful members hadn't they had no experience in this world, so don't feel like that's a prerequisite. But it all starts with taking action. And it all starts really with heading over to dropshipunlocked.com forward/start. Are you enjoying the podcast? We'd love to hear from you. Leave a comment or a review and we might feature it in an upcoming episode. And for detailed show notes and resources, visit dropshipunlock.com forward/podcast. If you found value in any episode of this podcast, please could you take just 10 seconds to leave us a quick five star review on your favourite podcast app. It helps us more than you can imagine. And who knows, you might just hear your comments read out on the show. Thanks for being a part of our community. Your support helps us keep delivering new episodes to you every week. Now it's that part of the episode where we're going to answer a question that's come in from a listener. So if any questions have come up while you've been listening or watching today, then simply comment beneath the YouTube video version of this episode and not only will it be answered in the comments, we'll also pull it out and potentially feature it on an upcoming episode. So this week's question is in from Tushar and they have asked, hi, can I get some ideas of what you have used as your limited company name please? Thanks for the question Tushar, and it's a really common one actually. This is something we hear a lot and it actually ties into the reason why we recommend setting up a limited company when you start your E commerce business at the very beginning is because it helps you build credibility with high quality UK suppliers when you approach them and reach out to them. If you can say, here's our limited company name, it just kind of ticks that box of like, oh okay, this is not an individual operating out of their garage at home. Like this is a real legitimate Company, even if you are operating out of your garage. And then when it comes to actually naming your company, most members go for something pretty neutral and flexible so that later on you can choose to apply that to any niche that you might want to sell it. So for example, you might add your surname and then like E commerce or group, like I could call mine Smith Trading Group Limited or something like that, you know, or James, you could call yours J E Trading Ltd. Right. It's, it's very kind of open, broad, generic limited company name. Remember what your limited company name is and what you trade as, or your trading name can be totally separate. And actually you can have multiple trading names that sit within a single limited company as well. So the goal really at the beginning is just to make it sound professional and broad. Don't tie yourself into any one niche. You don't need to have even decided which niche you're going to operate in before you get started and you don't need to have decided on your product line. In fact, we have a partnership with a service that can get you up and running faster and significantly cheaper than if you go to company's house and register your company as well. Plus get a free business bank account added in. So if you go to dropship unlocked.com forward/company there you can get your limited company set up your business bank account running and you will be ready to go within minutes. Awesome. Yeah, great question. And it's the exciting part of the process when you get your company set up and yeah, you can really see scale from there. So keep us posted with your progress. Now we're going to highlight a recent review that we've had for the podcast as well, because again, we'd love to shout you out the if you say something nice about the podcast, we really appreciate it. So we're going to feature you on an upcoming episode. So today we're going to feature Mark Smith and he has left us a very kind review. He simply said awesome content and that. Is all that needed to be said. Mark, we really appreciate it, man. A few words, but very powerful words at that. So thank you very much for your review, Mark. It means a huge amount to us. Now, before we end today's episode, if we could ask a really small favour of you. Leaving a review for our podcast helps us so much more than you might realise and it only takes you a few seconds to do. Your support just keeps us motivated to keep showing up and keep trying to bring you the best content that we can. So we'd love to hear what you think, and we might even be able to share your review in our upcoming episode. So please click to leave us a review for the podcast today. Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Dropship Unlocked podcast. We hope you are leaving with new insights and inspiration to fuel your entrepreneurial. Journey to kickstart your e commerce business. Head over to dropship unlocked.com start. It's the perfect place to start and get access to resources that will help you build your business from the ground up. And don't forget to hit that subscribe button for more episodes packed with strategies. Tips and success stories. Plus, if you enjoyed this episode today. A five star review would mean the. World to us and you might even. Get a shout out on the next episode. Thank you for choosing to spend your time with us today. We can't wait to bring you more insights on the next episode of the Dropship Unlocked podcast.